Dhamail folk culture, largely composed by Radha Raman Dutta (born 1833, died 1915), also known as Radha Romon, was an influential Sylheti folk music composer and poet from the Sunamganj District in Sylhet, Bangladesh. He is considered as the father of Dhamail folk dance and music. Apart from him Shah Abdul Karim too composed many such melodious pieces. At the core of the Dhamail songs lies the traditional lores of romantic bonds between Radha and Krishna, aesthetics similar to Indian alamkarsastra of Sri Sri Ujjvalanilamani also later found in Tagore’s Purba raag. The folk performers here seek to achieve an arousal of an emotive response in the spectator through a build-up of a complex gaits and postures of emotive situations, often attached to the cognition of an emotional state taken from our ordinary lives, which in this case is srngar (erotic) rasa and rati bhava as explicated in the treatise on dramatics, Natyasastra.
The performances do not just duplicate old forms, but show the relation to the homeland where the migrants feel a coerced departure. The sensorium of such performances in spaces of diaspora are bereft of any religious demarcations and more of a spiritual/emotional cognisance.The producer does not create such content with the intention of valorising the Sylheti identity, depends on the context and the consumers’ pattern of utilizing these content. Audiences experience a dramatised estrangement from ordinary experience, it encompasses the theatricality of the rasa that comes from its experience with our senses. Such a strong feeling of pride in being a Sylheti with a rich cultural compendium to its core is sensuous, proximate and experiential. It’s not just the muscular, cellular or neurological process, but also delves into the spatial and temporal politics of performances which is provided in this sense of a 'collective' aided through sanmelans.
